Quinn NortonFeb 11
I'm so confused, I am a bear of little brain, can someone explain to me, in simply words... HOW THE FUCK DO YOU COOL A DATA CENTER IN SPACE
Show threadMaxi 12x 💉Feb 11
@quinn Space is cold, no? I guess the cooling part would be the lesser issue.
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Feb 11

@frumble you need a medium for heat transfer and a *huge* area for radiating it away (since there is no heat transfer medium in space).

@quinn

Show threadMaxi 12x 💉Feb 11

@rysiek @quinn
So, even naked GPUs in outer space, unencapsulated, would just cook themselves, the heat won’t be engulfed by space at all?

https://social.circl.lu/@quinn/116054651911884306

Show threadQuinn NortonFeb 11
@frumble @rysiek not necessarily cook itself, there is *some* heat transfer in space, especially a busy place like and inner solar system. But modern computer components absolutely would toast themselves long before you really got much up and working. A whole datacenter? That's just absurd.
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Feb 12

@quinn @frumble yeah. There is simply nothing out there to "engulf" anything. Space is empty.

Think of it this way:

Air is a pretty bad heat transfer medium. Water is a much better heat transfer medium. If you could put a GPU directly in water it would cool faster. That's pretty intuitive.

Space is (basically) empty, it is not even comparable as a heat transfer medium to air, because well there is no medium.

Show threadQuinn NortonFeb 12
@rysiek @frumble I mean, there is some. We're not talk interstellar medium empty, where Voyager 2 is now. but it says something that V2 went though a 50,000 C temperature zone, and matter was so dispersed that it was fine
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Feb 12

@quinn @frumble I said "basically". Compared to air or a body of water on Earth's surface, it is negligible.

And if we're nit picking, there is also thermal radiation. That's *technically* a method of cooling, and one that is used by the Hubble telescope (among others)!

Show threadEllipsis... 🇨🇦Feb 12

@rysiek @quinn @frumble The author of this article did an estimation of the size of the radiator needed to cool a 1GW data center in space: 1.1 million m^2

https://www.chaotropy.com/why-jeff-bezos-is-probably-wrong-predicting-ai-data-centers-in-space/

Why Putting AI Data Centers in Space Doesn’t Make Much Sense

Jeff Bezos said gigawatt AI data centers will orbit Earth in 10 to 20 years. Thermodynamics makes this idea unfeasible. Without convection, waste heat must radiate through panels spanning millions of square metres. Add latency, radiation risks and costs.

Chaotropy
Show threadMichał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Feb 12

@tobiaspatton @quinn @frumble yeah. These are not serious people. Nobody should be spending all this time taking their bullshit investor-targeting hype seriously.

Musk promised people on Mars "in a decade" over a decade ago. He promised robotaxis "within a decade" over a decade ago.

The guy promises people on Mars but can't get a drunken dude driven home.

Show threadEllipsis... 🇨🇦
@rysiek @quinn @frumble and yet the media continues to credulously repeat outlandish predictions from known liars. We have the institutional memory of a fruit fly.
Feb 12 at 5:01pmWeb